Commercial & Industrial PV

While suburban Australian rooftops have become coated in solar panels, the roofs of our commercial and industrial buildings have remained conspicuously bare. Our shopping centres, however, seem to be slowly be moving in the direction ordinary Australian’s have paved, with Australia’s largest privately-owned shopping centre yesterday announcing plans for a sizeable microgrid. Likewise, Vicinity, one of the country’s largest shopping centre managers, has managed to increase its sustainability rating largely through its extensive solar program.

Government-owned water utility, SA Water, has completed its extensive solar installation project, which involved installing more than 350,000 PV panels across 33 water treatment plants and pump stations across metropolitan and regional areas of South Australia.

Market analysis firm GlobalData has released a new report in which it forecasts Australia’s solar capacity to increase by a factor of four, to over 80 GW, over the next decade. At the same time, the report predicts thermal power to lose its dominance in the energy mix, seeing its share cut by almost half.

Edge Centres’ model for grid-independent data distribution at the edge of connectivity is set to rock regional Australia with its low-cost reliability, and has been welcomed by solar operators in Japan.

Third-generation Wimmera-Mallee farmer Thomas Blair is expanding his fellow farmers’ horizons to cultivate green hydrogen.

Queensland is likely to join Victoria in dissension on the Australian Energy Market Commission’s draft determination which is being called a tax on solar. The Queensland Energy Minister, Mick de Brenni, has criticised the plan. Could this be the domino which brings the other states and territories falling into place against a rule change?

The Australian Energy Council’s quarterly Solar Report points to something getting bigger in the solar industry that isn’t just the larger format modules. What’s getting bigger is the average size of solar systems Australians are installing on their homes and small businesses.

While Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is putting the finishing touches on the Federal Budget, the Northern Territory Government has already rolled out its 2021-22 Budget and solar PV and battery storage are among its spending priorities with an extra $4.8 million invested in existing renewable energy schemes.

On New South Wales’s Northern Rivers the Tweed Shire Council has unanimously voted to push into the second phase of its pursuit of net zero emissions from its electricity usage by 2030. The move will see the Council’s solar capacity almost triple through 10 new solar installations.

The Northeast Asian nation has included PV projects exceeding 20 MW in size for the first time in its solar energy procurement scheme. Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.